Colleague buggering off home early. As their manager, would this bother you?

[Marie2022]

I have been in post for a few weeks and have had some problems with one of my direct reports. Nothing serious, mainly of the “Not my job” type of response from her, regarding things that very clearly are her job.

I sent her an email a few days ago at a time when she should have seen it. She didn’t reply. At which point someone said that she wasn’t actually there. The following day I asked her to confirm her hours, which she did.

I have just checked the CCTV for the past 2 weeks and she has been leaving 10-20 minutes early every single day.

Is this a big deal? As a manager, would this bother you? I just want to get some opinions before I do anything.

Many thanks.

Yes this! Try giving her a ring at the time shes meant to be there. Or do a whole group call near the end of the day to wish everyone a happy weekend or somethinf.

I don’t think leaving early is an issue if she’s getting work done but the attitude is a bit of a worry. However on the flip side workplaces will often take and take with no thanks. Personally I have left workplaces which are clock watching/use CCTV etc it’s like being in a prison or back at school! Trust your employees to do their job while being treated like adults. I refuse to work for companies with old school culture now and many professionals feel the same hence the Great Resignation!

The 'not my job' responses to things that actually are her job are a problem, as you and she appear to have different interpretations of her job description. You should be having regular catch-ups with her, as her manager, so you should use one of those an opportunity to talk through the duties in her job description and iron out any misunderstandings.

The time she leaves the office is hard to comment on without knowing anything about your line of work and the general culture of your company. Where I work, we're way, way more flexible than that and provided we're attending the meetings we need to attend and are getting our work done overall, nobody is watching the clock to see if someone's leaving at 4.45 instead of 5pm. A lot of people choose to work through lunch or come in a bit earlier, and I have colleagues who work in the office until a certain time, then take an hour or so out mid-afternoon for the school run, and then finish off their day working from home. But clearly that's a very different workplace to one where people are explicitly told that they must work to an exact shift pattern.

i Hope you get disciplined for covertly monitoring your employees.

@DaphneDeloresMoorhead hence my mention of core hours.

There are a couple of variables that would make it okay or not okay.

As the poster said about conditions in the NHS, this casual attitude to work would never be allowed in schools. They are really strict about members of staff signing out if they had a doctor's appt. Its for health and safety in case of fire etc.
Teacher recruitment is at an all time low.
www.theguardian.com/education/2022/apr/26/school-leader-retention-rates-in-england-declining-dfe-data-shows
Why would anyone work in a school when a lot of staff can get away with a really casual attitude to the work place in other areas

I’ve not RTFT but is it the case @Marie2022 that the employee said she left at eg 5pm but the CCTV shows she was gone by 4:40?
If that’s the case then she is guilty of outright dishonesty, and all this talk of possible flexitime : coming in earlier so it being ok to leave earlier is missing the point!! She is a fcuking liar!
Gross misconduct. I would sack her.

But this one isn’t behaving like an adult!
addressing one bad egg isn’t going to result in mutiny. Quite the reverse - it’ll perk up the other employees who have been watching this one slope off early for the past fortnight.

"Astounded by this attitude. I guess it depends on the culture but I respond to my boss’s emails immediately. I wouldn’t feel comfortable just leaving him hanging and he would chase me up anyway

20 minutes before the end of your formal working hours is still within the time parameter of when you should be working so why can’t you respond?"

Because a lot of people do work that isn't centred around email. Unless perhaps you work in a customer service role, it's unproductive to be constantly checking your email.

But I bet other people just saw you leaving early and jumped to conclusions, not realising that you had started early or had a short lunch break.

I believe she did when she asked what her core hours were.

I think she needs to have a sit down but telling the OP that she will be in big trouble for looking at CCTV is preposterous.

Exactly that is the problem.Presenteeism is a pain in the butt. In my workplace that I mentioned earlier I took to sending gratuitous e-mails soon after my 7.30 arrival (often saving them from the day before) in order to make clear that I was present and correct early. Another thing that really pissed me off is that i was responsible for liaising with our US office and so was often working late into the evening but my manager moaned about the 4.55 pm leaving so I could catch my train.

This is why I think the OP should delve further to see if there is a reason why the employee is doing this. Because it might not just be laziness. It might very well be as well. But she needs to find out.

I lasted 8 years in that workplace. In retrospect i have no idea how I lasted that long.

@Tanfastic you’re right you would be slaughtered for that, and people also think nothing of expecting you to essentially working for free in the NHS and prioritising your job over your own family and your own health.
I think this partly why it’s extremely difficult to recruit to healthcare at the moment. The way NHS staff are treated is often exploitative, and most workplaces would be ill-advised to follow their lead on that.

It’s the ‘not my job’ that would bother me.

If she was a stellar employee I wouldn’t care if she went home a bit early, as long as it didn’t impact on the business or other staff, but you can certainly use this to bring her to heel.

But how is she getting away with saying things aren’t her job when they are ?

To be fair I think the phrase gross misconduct might be something of an overstatement here. Typically gross misconduct refers to fraud, misappropriation of funds, inappropriate sexual conduct on work premises, physical assault. leaving 20mins early doesn’t really fit into that description.

You might also need to consider how poorly it would reflect on OP if she fired someone who was difficult to replace. Recruiting and retraining is a costly process for a company, so while there may be justification for firing someone under the rules it’s usually not a great look for some who has only been in the post a few weeks. Recruitment is difficult at the moment for most industries and ironically they may only be able to recruit a replacement if they offer even more flexible working conditions than the ones that the current employee is enjoying unofficially.

One of DH's managers once accused him of leaving an hour before everyone else. DH replied "I also arrive and start work an hour earlier than everyone else, as recorded on the security pass".

I'd check if the person is arriving early, or working through their lunch hour, to make up the right work hours either for transport or family reasons.

I managed back room services teams in the NHS for over 20 years and would have been fine with this. A good manager sets mutually agreed objectives and regularly reviews performance against them. If the work’s done to a high standard I really don’t care what hours someone works. I’m interested in outputs, not the amount of time someone spends at their desk. Anyone in my team who got arsy about a colleague leaving early would get put back in their box.

Treat people like grown ups and that’s how they’ll behave. It’s very clear from this thread that some people have never experienced that management style, both as managers and employees.

Even if they are doing this it's something a manager should be aware of and agree to

Organisations are under a legal obligation to secure CCTV records. If the OP accessed CCTV records to monitor the departure time of an employee and this access has not been pre-authorised by the organisation then the OP would have committed a serious breach of data protection.

By law someone working more than 6 hours has the right to a 20 minute break. Working through their lunch break is not acceptable under the Working Time regulations and should not be accepted or encouraged.

Your work sounds weird.

she probably has an arrangement to leave earlier, but the op hasn’t bothered to have an actual conversation with her. Some manager!

Oh look, another one who rushes in to criticise the OP without having read the post

At which point someone said that she wasn’t actually there. The following day I asked her to confirm her hours, which she did

If OP asked her to confirm her working hours, where’s the lie? She didn’t ask her what time she left.